April 8, 2009 - Knoxville’s 10th annual Earth Day Event, EarthFest 2009 will take place on Saturday, April 18 from 10am to 6pm at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. Admission and parking are free.

EarthFest is a “Zero-Waste Event” and organizers, sponsors and volunteers will provide recycling and composting opportunities for everything distributed at the event. There will be not trash cans on site. Last year at EarthFest ’08 with 9 thousand attendees, we recycled or composted over 950 lb. of materials and only 3.85 lb. went to the landfill from the entire event.

EarthFest has had a major impact on the community promoting environmental awareness and opportunities for individuals to reduce their environmental footprint on East Tennessee. This year, the 10th anniversary of EarthFest will again purchase carbon offsets to limit the impact the event will have on the environment.

This year for it’s 10th anniversary EarthFest will have a celebration party at Barley’s in the old city on April 17th with proceeds from donations at the door helping to fund EarthFest for next year. See www.knox-earthfest.org/party.php The line-up is as follows: Todd Steed & The Sons Of Phere w/ special guest Julia Nunes, Mic Harrison & The High Score ending with Bobby Bare Jr's Young Criminal Starvation League.

EarthFest events this year include a youth environmental learning area with projects like Nature Paintings, Soda Bottle Plant Holders, Milk Carton Piggy Bank, Origami and other environmental projects. The Water Quality Forum will be selling Rain Barrels in the main parking lot which benefits the Water Quality Forum, food vendors, environmental exhibitors, art and craft vendors, music, a Solar Power Workshop and two Energy Efficient seminars,
Lighting for Less and Home Performance with Energy Star. There will be a used household mercury thermometer exchange, a used ink cartridge collection, clean fuels vehicles, compost bin sales and more.

EarthFest gives back to the community, donating proceeds to fund activities such as the purchase of plants and trees in the James Agee Park and funding community creek litter programs at UT and Beaver Creek.